The Elusive Slider
by Graces of the Child
Summary: Otogi's dreams have felt way too real lately, and they'e all been centered around one person - someone named Ryou, a person that he has never met, but keeps meeting in different forms, night after night. Written for the Fanfiction Contest Round 4, Otogi Ryuuji/Bakura Ryou and hints of future Ryuuji/Isis.


**A/N: I think I'm starting to finally get into the contest here. This work is the third round of the Fanfiction Contest, with Minorshipping (Otogi Ryuuji/Bakura Ryou) as the theme. Alas, Ryou doesn't appear (well technically he does but doesn't), but in return I have hidden a little gem of smut in the middle of the fic (is writing smut for the contest ok? I think it is). Therefore, this fic is rated at M, though there's no penetration; also, both participants are over 18 and imaginary. **

**I'm hoping for this fic to be the first in a long line of other AU fics in the same universe that follow different categories with a bit of mystery thrown in about the universe, but it depends on what further inspiration I get and the pairings that come up. For now, enjoy!**

Otogi sat up in bed and groaned. This was the third night in a row that he'd had these dreams, or these things that felt like dreams because he woke up. But when he woke up, he always had that weird feeling that he hadn't been sleeping during them, because he was always just as tired as before the dream. These dreams were just getting too real and felt more and more like real memories.

They weren't like the dreams he usually had either. He could remember all the details so vividly, it was like he was there. It _felt _like he was there too; in his other dreams he never got tired and his emotions always seemed kind of dulled like his brain was on autopilot. But in these dreams, it was like his real body was acting out all the scenes that his mind was coming up with. He could feel strong emotions, he could touch things and feel the sensation in his fingers, and he could speak and hear his own voice.

Some things about the dreams were different every time. This one, he'd been in the middle of Egypt for some reason, running from bandits (and feeling _exhausted,_ like he'd run for hours) and the night before he'd been in a fantasy land fighting monsters and dressed in weird clothes while his giant body above rolled a set of dice. The first one had been the most normal, like a school drama with him and a purple-haired girl.

But all of them had a constant, besides the feeling that he really had been there so vividly. There had been a guy there, a white haired guy with a pretty face and grey-white hair that always _stared _at him with wide (green, then grey, and now violet) eyes and always was the subject of the dreams right alongside him. In Egypt Otogi had to hide in his shelter for refuge; the man had touched him and healed wounds that felt so real, and in the first dream he thought the white-haired mystery boy was a girl, but even after that the pretty boy appeared in his dreams every time.

Otogi had never seen a guy like that before in his life, not at school or at the comic shop downtown he worked part-time at. But the guy appeared, now three times in a row, and every time Otogi had, well, _swooned_ every time that he appeared in front of him. Obviously his brain was confused, he looked so much like a girl, but tonight's dream definitely proved that he was male, and still very attractive even with a tan on his thin frame.

And every time, except the recent one, he'd already known him beforehand and his mind remembered a history that didn't exist and details about a world completely different from the one that he was in when he was… awake? Because he was pretty sure he was asleep when these other worlds appeared.

Well there was no use going to sleep now, not for a while at least. He had finished all his homework, so he grabbed his laptop and pulled up the code he'd gotten part of the way through; it was due to Rebecca in a few days, and now was as good a time as ever. But he couldn't get the heat out of his mind, or the way that the man had touched his wounds and they seemed to stitch up, or the fact that back in the first dream the name 'Ryou' slipped from his lips.

Ugh, now he couldn't concentrate. He started to work on code to distract him, but that was so boring. And the guy was not only pretty, but touchy-feely in all the dreams, even though it always seemed to be by accident because the guy always seemed so sweet and shy and something that brought out Otogi's bold side…

Okay, this really wasn't helping. He felt like he was still in whatever world the dreams were in, and it was killing him that this guy wasn't leaving his head any time soon. He might as well try and get some sleep, maybe it'd feel better when he'd wake up this time.

"_I can't believe you'd do something like this! You knew this would spiral out of control, you knew it for nine years, and you just sat there with your thumbs up your __**ass**__ and let him abuse that deck!" Ryou was crazy mad now, his brown eyes wild and dark as if he was possessed all over again but his face was __**angry**__ like he'd never seen it before in the years and years of knowing him, but it was like he breathed fire and hurt and revenge._

"_Look, Ryou, I'm not a god-damn babysitter. I taught him to use that deck, but it's not my fault! How was I supposed to know those cards would do that?"_

_That hadn't helped at all. "How is it possibly __**not**__ your fault?! The deck you created is dangerous and possibly life-threatening and you left it in the hands of a teenager? And now he's gone and nobody knows how he came back and you're damn lucky he did come back, because if he didn't nobody would be seeing __**you**__ again either." I'd never seen anyone look that angry, not even Marik or Mai or Rebecca. _

_And now his voice had gotten cold and he was hinting at murder and that was always the worst possible sign; now I had to sober up really fast. "Look, Ryou, I get that you're upset, but you're being-"_

"_Irrational? This is my __**family**__, not your test subjects for your dark decks and your 'styles' or whatever bull-crap this is." Now the tears were coming and the anger dropped, before the tears came and Ryou's head dropped and he sobbed, his body was shaking and all the guilt came back onto me for the hurt that this 'little side-project' had caused and how irresponsible he was for it. _

_Ryou's body crumpled, all the fire gone and what was left was emotions, and probably fear that his family would end up as he had, possessed by dark forces and scarred and his mind possibly damaged. And all the guilt that I'd been trying to push away came like a ton on my shoulders, and I almost left in horror of seeing him bawling like that, but I couldn't, it was all my fault that him and his family were like this. _

_I sat next to him and put two hands on his shoulders and he seemed to realize that I was still there and watching him and stopped. His head was still dropped and the sadness was still there. I couldn't stand to see him like that ever again, and those looks that came from his face were definitely a wake-up call. _

"_I'm so sorry Ryou. I was wrong and stupid and completely irresponsible and I'll do whatever I can. I'll pay for all the doctors, I'll find the deck and destroy it, I'll find guys to kill whoever I need to get him and you guys out of this." He sniffed, and still wouldn't look up, his right hand a vice lock on his left arm where his scar was._

Otogi woke up in a cold sweat, but all the feelings that had been triggered by that dream were still bleeding through – guilt, sadness, sympathy, horror – and he had to pinch himself a few times to make sure he really was awake. That one had been the most real one yet. The thirst and exhaustion from bandits, the fire burns from a fantasy-land monster, those had felt real, but the raw emotions that had suddenly burst out from both of them were horrible and completely terrifying. Nothing, not even seeing his mother having surgery for appendicitis, had managed to terrify Otogi that much and make him feel like that before.

Now he was sure these dreams were real somehow, as if he really had been there when Ryou was screaming at him or when Ryou had traced healing lines across his sunburnt chest in the desert. He got up to make tea and prayed for the sun to come up soon.

Going through his stuff for school, he found a flyer for a fortune-teller or gypsy thing that had happened last week. For some reason she seemed to draw his eye, in the same way that Ryou had always done in his dreams. There was a name that he searched on his computer, Ishizu Ishtar. She worked close to his area, and Otogi was getting desperate to talk to someone who wouldn't immediately think he was crazy or on drugs. He found her e-mail address and sent her a message, asking to meet within the next couple days.

_Ryou was wearing that mysterious object again, the one he said he'd gotten from… now that I think about it, he hadn't said. Well, now he did anyway. He told me what had happened, that a stranger had come to him, a tall man with wild hair and eyes, and said that if he took this item and learned to control his magic that he'd get any wish granted._

_Now I thought the whole thing was stupid but now Ryou said he hadn't been able to remove the item even though it was hanging on a cord, like he had some kind of freaky mental block about taking it off. He was crying, telling me that every time he tried, the ring would stab him, its points going through his chest and into his heart, but there weren't any marks or points on his chest. _

"_He said that he gave me this item to fight off a dark spirit, like he had when he was a pharaoh, and I don't know why I believed him. I just wanted something and he showed me what he could do with his magic, and he could've brought Amane back! I would've taken any opportunity, no matter how crazy."_

_And Ryou confessed everything to me, saying that he had sold his soul in the false hope of seeing his sister once more, and that he had worked to do magic, real __**magic **__with two others who had done exactly the same thing. _

"_I- I understand that you would never want to see me again. I understand, I feel so, so weird, like I'm empty. They said that my soul was in the item now and that feels right, my body doesn't even feel like mine anymore. I feel like a lich, like my soul is so gone!" He looked hurt again and I couldn't take it anymore. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry to tell you all this but this is driving me crazy, and I can't take this anymore! I'm so, so sorry I know that you would've told me to refuse and now I'm trapped by this incubat-"_

_I kissed him, because I needed to show him somehow that I would always be there for him no matter what he had done even if I had a hard time believing it. After a while he leaned into me and hugged me around the waist and didn't let go for a while and I kept kissing him, trying to tell him through some kind of action that it'd be okay, okay, that I wouldn't leave him. _

_He broke away and kept hugging me, his face in my shoulder, and I felt numb for the first time in a while but I knew that I'd be there from him and I'd have to deal with this asshole, whatever magic crap did this to him._

That dream was the trippiest one yet, and he felt like he was missing a lot of context that the mind in the dream had, but that he couldn't remember – he only had what happened during the dream, and it frustrated him. But the emotions still bled through; compassion, tenderness, and even affection along with fear and disbelief and shock. They all came from him just as they had been for whoever he was when he was having the dream.

Otogi asked everyone he knew during school and work this week if they knew a white-haired boy named Ryou and was looking everywhere for a glimpse of him on the street, maybe a guy that had been staring at him on the train everyday and he hadn't noticed but his subconscious had, but nothing came of it.

Ishizu e-mailed him back, saying that she'd be happy to meet with him tomorrow, which was good for him because any more than that and he'd start to go stir crazy. He couldn't take seeing someone at such intimate moments of someone he barely knew – now he knew so much about this guy in so many different worlds and with different eye colors and backstories and emotions that he stirred up.

_I took a minute to slow down because we'd been going so damn fast so far. His hair was wild, sticking out all over the place, and his blue eyes looked at me but didn't seem to be seeing anything; he looked completely blissed out and I was pretty sure I was starting to feel the same way. _

_My hands followed the spots that his hands guided me to; his pelvic bones, where I massaged them slowly, trying to bring him back to earth. But apparently he really liked my hands on his hips like that because he mewled, making quiet "mmm"'s while his hands caressed my back and neck, tender but almost too shy to touch anything besides my face and hands. His noises turned me on, and I kept going as he massaged my scalp and brought his knees on the bed. _

_Eventually he moved my hands down to his thighs, which I rubbed in circles and he kept making noises that sounded really good. He brought his hands to my inner thighs, stroking softly but not quite in the right spot – he was driving me crazy, his hands were so __**close,**__ but he wouldn't move them. _

_Then all of a sudden he sped up again, after I'd pushed my hands from his thighs to fondle his butt, and moved his hips to bring his dick onto mine, rubbing the two together end to end in one definitive motion. _

"_Uhh!" I shouted, that was so damn good, I could feel the pressure building already. "Do that again!" _

_His hips moved like a woman's, sultry, with his ass out in the air, but it was only for a second before he sped up again. He was so hard, and I could see in his face that he was totally gone with lust and desire, and I could feel myself getting even harder. Now he was going faster, and I joined in, grinding and rubbing against his body._

_We were both moaning now, and he was saying things that I couldn't make out in a high breathy voice, and it kept going faster. His dick was rubbing mine so hard like he was going to burst without that friction, and I felt the same way as I moved back onto him. I was getting closer to bursting, and grabbed his hand; I led both our hands in the middle of the friction, coaxing both of us to stroke faster while he kept grinding himself on me and me on him. _

_I kept throwing my head back onto the pillow and his head moved so that he was licking my lips and kissing me all over the place. He was moaning now, his voice still high and I realized I was the one babbling now, encouraging him to go faster and use his hands "there, and there – god Ryou you're so good, keep going, god I love you, you're so fucking good, yeah, like that…"_

_He kept going and I was grateful, and I found his lips and kissed him hard and fully, and he moaned in my mouth and came, his ass moving back and forth as I sat up and dragged him across me completely while he finished long and fast. I saw his ass move again as he snaked down my body (god he looked like a porn star), and I was so close, with his eyes and his ass and the pressure from his hands. _

_With the blissed out look still on his face, he wrapped his hand and mine on my dick and he gave it a long, slow lick, and I came. I'm pretty sure I was screaming his name and he kept licking under me until I stopped, finally coming down and feeling his come and his fingers on my body. He collapsed on top of me, both of us sticky and exhausted but satisfied._

Otogi hadn't woken up with his sheets that bad off since he was thirteen, but that was by far the best sex dream he'd ever had, not just because it _felt_ so real but because the self (him?) that was fucking Ryou was full of so much lust and love. He couldn't take this any longer. Thankfully, it was the day he met with Ishizu, so he showered and cleaned up and made his way to the other end of the city.

A big man with a hood over his head that only showed his hard-lined mouth waved him in after he gave his name, and he came in through a room that was simple and full of clean, neutral colors. It wasn't anything like the gaudy psychic's rooms he'd seen on television. There was incest and she was sitting at a table that looked almost like a business desk.

"Pleasure to meet you, Otogi," she said. She had just said his last name, but she was a foreigner it seemed. On first glance Ishizu was definitely attractive; tall and busty with long dark hair and sexy-librarian glasses. She also had an aura of confidence that made Otogi nervous, but a pleasant smile. "You're right on time. Please, take a seat."

He sat, and she leaned back in her chair. "I'm glad you came to me Otogi. I have a feeling that this was a good time." And she smiled, and he felt uncomfortable, like she knew exactly what happened. "You described having strange dreams, can you give me a couple examples?"

So he told her about the first two, which had been vague enough. As she asked him questions, he emphasized how real they had felt, as if he was really in those moments in time, with all the memories that he'd had from whoever was in those dreams. He described Ryou a little bit, telling her that he'd been the focus of every dream so far.

Ishizu through all this smiled. "Thank you for telling me all this, Otogi. Now I'm really glad you came to me. I think I can explain why all this is happening. But first, I want to ask, when you're in these dreams, it always feels like you're a different version of yourself, right? That you have all the experiences and another entire history of this other self of yours?"

"Yeah, I guess so." He hadn't thought about it like that before.

"And these dreams always fall about one other person, this Ryou?"

He nodded.

She smiled at him, and stood up, tucking her hair behind her shoulders. "Well Otogi, I'd like to tell you that what you're doing is not usual, but something that is explainable. First, I'd like to offer myself as an explanation.

"At some points in the past I felt like I was in two places at once, or that I was observing events far beyond where my body was. I sought the help of a person, like you did, and they showed me that I was able to move my mind into other points of space and even into time that were among this world."

Otogi stiffened; this seemed like crazy to him, and he was wondering if the business-like décor was just a cover-up for a scammer or a loony.

"They also told me that there were others, who had been gifted the ability to move beyond our world – travellers between dimensions, who can slide their mind into one or another. They can visit any alternate universe, one that has the potential to exist, as they are grounded in what we consider 'our' universe. Tell me, have you ever had that feeling in your dreams? That your mind was inhabiting a new body in new circumstances?"

After a while, he nodded, starting to see what her theory was. It felt oddly comforting, to have someone diagnose him with something, that he forgot for a minute how crazy it was because it felt so right to hear it.

"I can help you, Otogi Ryuuji, as the reason that this Ryou has been the focus of your dimensional travels is because you need to find him. You need to find him, and meet with him and have the two of you in the same reality present. Your brain is clearly trying to tell you that." He nodded, listening intently to her. Outside, he could hear the man shuffle closer to the door.

She sat back down in her seat with a broad smile, and pulled out a manila folder full of papers. "I will help you find him, Otogi, but in return you must help me. I've got some people I need to track down myself, and you sharpening your power to see into other worlds can help me find the clues I need."

Otogi paused for a second. "Just by dreaming about you and some other people?"

"To start with, yes."

"Can I think about it for a few days?"

She crossed one leg over the other, and turned her full gaze on him. "You may, but I think you'd like to have me start helping you learn to focus your dreams as soon as possible, right?"

Oh, wow, uh, she was probably right then. He nodded slowly, overwhelmed by the information and her business-like deals and explanations of things that didn't seem possible but were clearly happening to him. "Fine, I'll help you, and you'll help me."

"Excellent. Let's begin right away."

**A/N: Thanks for reading, hope you liked it! Please review and let me know what you think! **


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